Fake Quotes: 150 Stories

Indian actor Aamir Khan has accused Pakistani news sites of faking an interview, the India Times reported.
A major Bollywood star, Khan was quoted making controversial and insensitive statements on religion tied to his...

Deadspin was duped by a satirical story claiming that the 2016 Olympics would have 3-on-3 basketball.
The fake claims came from a satire article on the site The Betoota Advocate.
The satire article, "IOC...

Elizabethtown, Kentucky newspaper the News-Enterprise fired two copy editors for falsely inserting a quote into a story saying the local sheriff said people join law enforcement to shoot minorities, Jim Romenesko...

The Huffington Post was hoaxed by a fake interview with someone they found on social media claiming to witness the shooting death of an 18-year-old by a police officer at a St. Louis gas station.
The Huffington Post...

Boston.com reporter Hilary Sargent was suspended and re-assigned after her coverage of Harvard Business School professor Ben Edelman, who challenged a Chinese restaurant about being over-charged $4. (Edelman later...

Below, check out the top ten stories iMediaEthics covered of news outlets being duped by fake or satire stories.
10. 50 Meter Banjo Statue Not Going up in UK Town [link]
In April, the UK Eastern Daily Press...

The New York Times published fake quotes attributed to Kanye West about his and Kim Kardashian's butts after being duped by satire site the Daily Currant.
The Times' Nov. 22 correction has gone viral.
The...

The Associated Press has slammed the FBI for impersonating as an AP journalist with a fake news story to catch a criminal.
Earlier this month, the undercover operation, which happened back in 2007, was revealed.
In...

Heat magazine admitted it made up quotes from Jessica Biel about her marriage to Justin Timberlake.
Timberlake and Biel sued Heat over the Sept. 6 edition's article and pictures, which was titled both "Justin...

Despite having made the claim since the 1980s, writer Seiji Yoshida did not kidnap 200 women during World War II to act as "comfort women" doing brothel work to service Japanese soldiers.
The Asahi Shimbun, the...

Canada's QMI Agency, which is Sun Media's national news wire, wrongly reported NHL player Sidney Crosby of the Pittsburgh Penguins was arrested for driving related reasons while in Ottawa this week. A big problem...

UK newspaper The Kentish Gazette provided enough information about a sexual assault victim that readers could identify her. The newspaper's article also implied it interviewed the victim even though it didn't, and...

The International Business Times falsely reported on Andy Coulson's stay in prison.
Andy Coulson has not been attacked while serving his sentence for phone hacking, his former News of the World employee and cell...

San Diego Jewish World published fake quotes purportedly from an interview by NPR with Sandra Fluke. The author of the San Diego Jewish World article, Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel, apologized and retracted his column.
San...

Several news outlets were hoaxed by a satire article claiming Michele Bachmann called for immigrant children to move into "Americanization Facilities," or labor camps, Gawker reported.
The story originated from...

In another cautionary tale about not checking facts, last month, the Frederick News-Post in Maryland admitted that it published fake quotes that said American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray thought women have...

French soccer player Paul Pogba accused the UK Daily Mail of publishing a fake interview with him.
Pogba is a midfielder who plays for the Italian team Juventus.
The May 30 Daily Mail article is titled, "Paul...

Soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo accused the UK Sun of publishing a fake interview, but the Sun said it actually was publishing excerpts from his biography.
"We did not claim to have interviewed Ronaldo," Sun...

American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray said women have underdeveloped brains. Never mind. He didn't say that.
This was a fake quote in the The Frederick News-Post, a daily Maryland newspaper that...

A fake press release claimed Oregon's Reed College said it was going to divest its holdings of fossil fuel stocks. Both The Portland Tribune and KBOO were duped by the hoax, which was orchestrated by the pranking...

The Norwich (Connecticut) Bulletin published quotes by a high school coach. Problem was he was never interviewed by their sports writer. The quotes were faked. The paper only found out after the coach called to...

The Ontario Press Council ruled against the Toronto Star for misquoting York University professor Dr. Blake Martin last month.
Martin is the course director for the university's Department of Dance and has a PhD in...

Zimbabwe's The Sunday Mail apologized and admitted it published a fake interview with politician Roy Bennett, according to the Zimbabwe Daily.
The March 23 article, published in print and online, "Bennett...

The dean of students at Michigan's private college Albion grounded student publication The Pleiad for nine days.
Much like naughty children being sent to their rooms, the ban on publication came after the...

Right Wing News blogger John Hawkins' misquotation of Wisconsin governor Scott Walker resulted in him being called a liar and mocked by media outlets.
Hawkins had originally written on his blog, before his...

David Bar Katz is suing the National Enquirer over its Feb. 17 cover story claiming he and Philip Seymour Hoffman were lovers and that he saw the actor taking cocaine and heroin. Katz, a playwright and friend of Hoffman,...

CBS News has taken disciplinary action in responding to airing a false story about the 2011 Benghazi attack.
Lara Logan and her producer Max McClellan are now on a "leave of absence" because of Logan's...

A fake photo and story claiming that an 800-pound tortoise was discovered in the Amazon River has been making the Internet rounds. However, the image of the huge tortoise being used as evidence of the discovery is actually...

Unlike in the United States, allegations of defaming a company can land you in jail in China.
Chinese journalist Chen Yongzhou admitted that he made up stories about the"state-run" company, Zoomlion, in...

Actress Suzanne Somers wrote an article about health care for the Wall Street Journal. But, the article, "The Affordable Care Act is a Socialist Ponzi Scheme," included two fake quotes, and the Journal has...

The UK Telegraph has admitted to publishing a tweet from a fake Twitter account for Libyan Prime MInister Ali Zidan, after iMediaEthics' inquiry.
Zidan doesn't have his own Twitter account, but someone is...

Several news outlets, including the Daily Mail, Reuters and the Guardian, were hoaxed by a fake Twitter account purporting to be that of Libyan prime minister Ali Zidan, who was briefly kidnapped this week.
The prime...

Fox News was hoaxed by a satire story claiming President Barack Obama was going to "pay out his own pocket for the Museum of Muslim Culture." That was "juxtaposed perfectly against a story of veterans...

Turkish newspaper Yeni Safak published a partially faked interview with linguist Noam Chomsky August 27, the Wall Street Journal reported.
While Chomsky did conduct an e-mail interview with the paper in mid-August, Yeni...

ESPN Radio 104.5 in Albany, N.Y. was hoaxed by a man posing as former New York Yankees baseball player Shane Spencer. According to NJ.com, the hoaxer called into the radio station and admitted to using steroids. ...

Something fishy happened over at the Bangkok Post last week.
The Thailand newspaper apparently published a fake story about the country's former prime minister Anand Panyarachun, according to an August...

USA Today was apparently hoaxed by a source giving a fake name "Howie Felterbush" for a story about the verdict in the George Zimmerman case. Zimmerman was found not guilty of manslaughter or second degree murder...

Montreal newspaper La Presse was hoaxed by a fake Twitter account for actor Bill Murray.
In a June 23 post, La Presse quoted from the alleged account in its "quote of the week section." But the real...

The Daily Mirror was hoaxed by a fake story about a man lapsing into a coma after eating 413 biscuits, Arkansas Matters reported. Not only did the Mirror publish a story about the satire coma tale, but the the...

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram was hoaxed by a satirical website into publishing a fake quote.
The Texas newspaper had published the fake quote in a June 11 editorial on controversial graduation speeches. It has since...

News site The Inquisitr joined the Daily Mail in publishing a retraction to admit that it published quotes from a fake interview with former James Bond actor Sir Roger Moore.
As iMediaEthics wrote back in January, the UK...

A "producer error" led MSNBC to quote Vice President Joe Biden out of context from one event (about the attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya) and apply it to another segment with a completely different meaning,...

Chattanoogan.com blogger and veteran sports broadcaster Randy Smith retracted his April 10 blogpost, apologized for quoting Geno Auriemma, head coach of University of Connecticut women's basketball team The Huskies, out...

San Jose, California daily newspaper The Mercury News fessed up this week to being hoaxed by a joke tweet claiming that President Barack Obama was going to lend a soccer player Air Force One.
The errors began when...

Fox News has owned up and disclosed to readers that it included bad information in a Jan. 21 post about Harvard University geneticist George Church, but a few media outlets still have fake quotes published on their...

Was the UK Daily Mail hoaxed by a fake Twitter account purporting to be Bashid Mclean, the New York man who is accused of murdering and dismembering his mother, Tanya Byrd?
In a story about a photo Mclean reportedly...

Falkland Islands newspaper the Penguin News made up an interview with Argentine Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman, the Knight Center for Journalism in Americas reported.
The made-up interview was published in the...

The Knight Foundation paid $20,000 for Jonah Lehrer to speak about his plagiarism and fabrication scandal earlier this week.
As iMediaEthics has written, last summer Lehrer resigned from the New Yorker and was fired from...

Mayor Jay Obernolte was interviewed by CNN's Wolf Blitzer last night about the search for former Los Angeles police office Chris Dorner.
But, after that interview, CNN's live blog said that the network...

Yesterday, CNN deleted information from its live blog on the search for former police officer Chris Dorner and said that it found out the interview had been with someone posing as the mayor of Big Bear Lake, Jay Obernolte,...

CNN was hoaxed by someone posing as Big Bear Lake Mayor Jay Obernolte, according to a note on its live blog coverage of the police manhunt for Christopher Dorner in the San Bernardino Mountains. Dorner is the former...

Shortly after Mediaite called the Washington Post out for being duped by a satire site, the Post scrubbed references to phony quotes and information claiming Sarah Palin was going to work for Al Jazeera...

Harvard University genetics professor George M. Church says media reports have fabricated quotes attributed to him.
The sensational quotes and reports claimed that Church was looking for a woman to serve as a...

10) CNBC hoaxed by email interview about NBA Escorts
Seven months after his story claiming escort services were financially suffering because of the 2011 National Basketball Association lockout, CNBC's Darren Rovell...

The New York Post was tricked by a fake Facebook page for Ryan Lanza, the brother of the Adam Lanza, the gunman in the Dec. 16 Connecticut school massacre. Adam Lanza killed 26 adults and children at Sandy Hook...

This past week, news outlets in the UK and Canada were hoaxed by a company purporting to be a "celebrity sperm donor service" and an actor posing as the company's CEO, which all turned out to be a viral...

The Drudge Report linked to a fake Twitter account purporting to be Jake Gyllenhaal, Mediaite reported.
The post directed to the tweet "As a Democrat, I'll say it now, I endorse Mitt Romney For President of the...

The Daily Collegian, the student newspaper at Penn State University, apologized and suspended a student writer after he fabricated quotes to attribute to Sue Paterno, the wife of the late football coach Joe Paterno, for...

iMediaEthics previously highlighted a phony Twitter account purporting to be Angelina Jolie. As we wrote this summer, Balkan media outlets were hoaxed by the account and reported the fake Jolie tweets.
But, Cafe...

"Shopping & style" Lucky magazine reader Rosemary Avance called out the magazine for running a fake quote praising a free gift she repeatedly told the magazine she never received, Jezebel reported.
The fake...

SPLIT, Croatia -- Balkan media outlets and an Olympic coach were hoaxed by a fake Twitter account purporting to be actress Angelina Jolie in which she criticized Croatian handball coach Slavko Goluza.
The comments...

As we wrote earlier this week, Jonah Lehrer's book Imagine was revealed to include fake quotes attributed to Bob Dylan. Now, his book publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt "is running digital ads" recalling the...

Jonah Lehrer resigned from the New Yorker yesterday after being busted for fake Bob Dylan quotes in his book Imagine, The New York Times reported.
Lehrer's journalism ethics were in the news this summer because of...

A fake op-ed defending WikiLeaks purporting to written by former New Yor\k Times executive editor Bill Keller is circulating.
Keller tweeted July 29 about the phony op-ed, writing in all capital letters:
"THERE...

The Hollywood Reporter wrongly attributed comments from a parody Twitter account to The New York Times public editor.
We wrote earlier this week about the parody Twitter account purporting to be Times public editor...

The New York Post's Page Six quoted from a parody Twitter account posing as New York Times public editor Arthur Brisbane, Poynter's Julie Moos wrote.
The phony Twitter account, @timespublicedit, tweeted jokingly...

The Evening Standard and Daily Mail are being sued for libel by Sussex University PhD student Luke Cooper over 2010 reports that suggested "Cooper was a ringleader, and planned with others in advance to hijack a...

A French magazine has apologized for misquoting actress Megan Fox, Gossip Cop reported.
The magazine, Jalouse, reported for an April story that Fox said, "I live well with my image. I cannot complain. I would not...

Malaysian newspaper The New Straits Times issued a substantial retraction and apology May 3 for a May 2 article headlined "Observer Under Scrutiny: Impartiality Questioned: Anti-Islam Australian lawmaker comes...

Voice of America apologized Feb. 2 for running a fake interview with "well-known Russian opposition blogger Alexi Navalny," according to a note from Voice of America director David Ensor. The Voice of Russia...

Pop singer Charlotte Church filed a libel lawsuit against UK newspaper The People over a November 6, 2011 story , The Guardian's Roy Greenslade reported. The People is a Trinity Mirror-owned weekly newspaper with a...

In December, ESPN unpublished quotes attributed to University of Oregon men's basketball coach Dana Altman after it turned out the quotes were fake. We wrote about the unpublishing and the fake quotes in early...

ESPN's Eamonn Brennan reported Dec. 19 that he had cited quotes that turned out to be fake. Brennan also unpublished his original post with the fake quotes.
According to Brennan, in an earlier story from the...

The UK Guardian published a footnote to a quoted description in its Nov. 21 "Pass Notes" section clarifying information attributed to the Spectator's Rod Liddle, according to Liddle. Liddle noted that he...

The Associated Press reported that it had corrected its Nov. 18 story that reported quotes attributed to Christopher Walken. Walken's comments addressed the death of actress Natalie Wood. "Walken was sharing a yacht with...

Baton Rouge, Louisiana newspaper The Advocate recently apologized for wrongly attributing quotes to a local high school football coach.
But the kicker is that The Advocate doesn't know who its reporter got the quotes from,...

The Pakistan Observer published a clarification disclosing that an Interservice Public Relations spokesperson "contradicted" the newspaper's story and claimed the story featured "factually incorrect and...

Nearly three months after bloggers first called out the Independent's Johann Hari for plagiarism, he has admitted to the charges, the Independent reported.
As StinkyJournalism has written, Hari was accused in a...

The Denver Post's Woody Paige apologized for "lifting quotes without attribution" in an article on ESPN, Regret the Error reported. Paige reportedly took three quotes from SportsBusiness Journal's John Ourand's...